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Andrews ‘gobsmacked’ by Hollywood award, 60 years after ‘Mary Poppins’
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Deserving Dame: Julie Andrews attends on June 9 the 48th AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute, “Celebrating Julie Andrews”, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. (AFP/Getty Images/Frazer Harrison)
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early 60 years after preaching the virtues of patience and modesty as Mary Poppins and governess Maria, Julie Andrews declared she was "gobsmacked" to have her career honored at a glitzy Hollywood gala on Thursday.
"I didn't know or think that it would ever come," the 86-year-old told AFP on the red carpet before receiving the annual American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in Los Angeles. "But it's just as well, because you can't go around expecting awards and things like that."
In fact, Andrews won the Oscar for best actress with her very first big screen role, 1964's Mary Poppins, after progressing rapidly from a child singer touring British music halls to a Broadway starlet spotted by Walt Disney.
A year after playing the magical and squeaky-clean nanny and still in her 20s, Andrews sealed a permanent place among the Tinseltown elite with The Sound of Music.
Five of the actors who played the children of the wealthy Austrian family Von Trapp, in need of Maria's singing lessons and help in evading the Nazis, attended Thursday's ceremony, along with four of Andrews' real-life offspring.
Andrews went on to star in a number of films from the 1970s to the 1990s, with some racy, even topless, scenes that shocked audiences more used to her straightlaced characters.
In 2000, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to acting and entertainment.
Following a personal disaster when her vocal cords were damaged in an operation, Andrews revived her career with The Princess Diaries (2001) and its sequel in 2004.
Her voiceover work as Queen Lillian in the Shrek animated film series, Gru's mother in the Despicable Me franchise and Lady Whistledown in the hugely popular Netflix series Bridgerton earned her a new generation of young fans.
Andrews was due to receive the AFI award, billed as "the highest honor for a career in film”, in 2020 and again in 2021, but the gala was postponed both times due to the pandemic.
"When they asked me even two-and-a-half years ago – and Covid is what kept us from doing it then – I was gobsmacked," she said.
